University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences

Recent Posts

One in four college women report surviving rape or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime.
673,000 women currently attending U.S. colleges and universities have experienced rape at some point in their lifetime.
Each year, there are about 293,000 victims of sexual assault.
68% of sexual assaults are not reported to police.
98% of rapists will never spend ...more

Undergraduate and Graduate Students Visiting the Zoo
On October 11th, 30 students enrolled in Dr. Chris Lynn's Physical Anthropology seminars caravanned up the freeway to the Birmingham Zoo. We attended a private tour of the primate facility, which was lead by a trained zoologist. She shared with us information about each species, as well as funny anecdotes ...more

BIOGRAPHY: DR. AUGSTIN FUENTES, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Photo from Google Images
Professor Agustín Fuentes is originally from Santa Barbara, CA. From an early age, he had an interest in biology. His enthusiasm increased while taking a class taught by Dr. Phyllis Dolhinow during his undergraduate career. The class concentrated on the similarities between primates and humans, which ...more

The “treatment of human evolution is abysmal”. Previous research completed by Meads and Mates indicates the inclusion of the Big Bang Theory is nearly non-existent in education regarding the origin of the universe. Instead, creationist theory is being taught to students. While their assessment indicated multiple states received poor grades in evolution education, Alabama showed a distinct ...more

BIOGRAPHY: DR. CAROL WORTHMAN, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Dr. Worthman attended Pomona College, receiving a BA in Botany and Biology. She then attended the University of California at San Diego Medical School, Department of Endocrinology. Next, she was trained at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Nutrition and Food Science before receiving her PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University.
Professor Worth­man is the Samuel Candler ...more

In the United States, we are conditioned to believe that race is a biological construct. The notion that racial classifications can be made based on observable characteristics (i.e., skin color, facial features, hair, ect) is intrinsic. The thought is pushed on people and perpetuated through education.
Biologists and geneticists support "multiple races in humans". For example, geneticist Christopher Norris ...more

There are two competing hypotheses on the origin of modern humans: the Out-of-Africa hypothesis and the multiregional hypothesis. It has long been recognized that the genus Homo was the first hominid to leave Africa and disperse into other major continental areas. Evolution of the genus Homo from Australopithecus seems to be linked to global climate changes ...more

Homo georgicus
Homo georgicus is the subspecies name used to describe fossil jaws found in Dmanisi, Georgia.
The first bone found of Dmanisi was a mandible in 1991. It was discovered while archaeologists were excavating a medieval site. It is known as 'Dmanisi Man', and was initially proposed as a sub-species of Homo erectus but it is now classified as ...more

The University of Alabama's Department of Anthropology has an incredible tradition to welcome new students and create comradery within the department. Each year they host a Potlatch, which involves food, booze, and the passing of tokens from advisor to student, professor to professor, and friend to friend. My personal advisor bestowed upon me a book entitled ...more

CC 4.0 by TravelingOtter
The Poorest, Sickest State
Mississippi is the U.S.’s poorest state and has the lowest rates of insurance coverage. Mississippi also has very poor health outcomes including the highest or second highest rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and age-adjusted death rate due to cancer (Mississippi State Department of Health 2014). These rates are ...more

A few years ago, I'd all but decided I wasn't going to go to the American Anthropological Association main conference anymore. This was the year it was in San Francisco (111th Annual Meeting, 2012). Ironically, that was a memorable conference. I had several good meals in the Vietnamese neighborhood nearby (it was hosted in the ...more

On Wednesday, the day after our 2017 presidential election, I dreaded having to put on my host face to go out to dinner with Dr. Joseph Graves, our ALLELE speaker for Thursday. I couldn't really stand the thought of talking to anyone. His talk on "Biological determinism in the age of genomics" was supposed to ...more

Mirjam Holleman (author, left) presenting on the topic of (dis)ability and social inclusion to a small audience at a festival (Slot Art Festival) in Poland, summer 2016. Photo courtesy Mirjam Holleman.
The anthropologist is frequently construed as an ideally detached observer who doesn’t let his or her own ideals or visions for society interfere with ...more

As a psychological anthropologist interested in alternative healing options, I recently traveled to Peru to experience ayahuasca with a shaman I had been corresponding with for some time. Ayahuasca is being used to help treat war veterans and others suffering from PTSD and depression. Its use as a treatment option for addicts has also become ...more

This is the first post of a series of blogs describing the Bribrí people of Talamanca, Costa Rica. I have been living in the community of Yorkín conducting research since June of 2015. Yorkín is a community of around 270 people situated on the border with Panama which has experienced rapid culture change due to ...more

This is the second post of a series of blogs describing the Bribrí people of Talamanca, Costa Rica. I have been living in the community of Yorkín conducting research since June of 2015. Yorkín is a community of around 270 people situated on the border with Panama which has experienced rapid culture change due to ...more

This is the third post of a series of blogs describing the Bribrí people of Talamanca, Costa Rica. I have been living in the community of Yorkín conducting research since June of 2015. Yorkín is a community of around 270 people situated on the border with Panama which has experienced rapid culture change due to ...more

This is the fourth post of a series of blogs describing the Bribrí people of Talamanca, Costa Rica. I have been living in the community of Yorkín conducting research since June of 2015. Yorkín is a community of around 270 people situated on the border with Panama which has experienced rapid culture change due to ...more

In our final day of partnership, we explored the diverse world of body modification. I defined body modification as any deliberate act to change one’s physical appearance. When we looked at some examples from around the world like Nigerian earlobe stretching and Japanese teeth blackening, the students seemed shocked. They could not believe that someone ...more

This week our discussion was on “RACE”, which is a very complicated subject. Because of the complexities of the subject, students gained a wealth of information. The students learned that there are many different “RACES” of people throughout the world. Students were given the opportunity to come up before the class to point out the different ...more

Today’s topic at TMSE was evolution. This is an especially important topic to teach because evolution is so often glossed over in many public schools – I know it was in mine. If we can introduce the principles of evolution to kids when they are young, hopefully people will be more knowledgeable about the concepts ...more

Every semester we profile a faculty or staff member from the Anthropology Department who you may see every day but know less about than you realize. In fact, many of us became interested in anthropology because of the interesting adventures it presents. Dr. John Blitz (http://jblitz.people.ua.edu/), Professor of Anthropology and Curator at the Alabama Museum ...more

Characteristics of Primates at TMSE
The lesson started off reviewing C.L.A.P. The students have reviewed C.L.A.P. so often they are able to explain cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and physical anthropology very well. I explained to the class that we’ll be going further into physical anthropology today by discussing primates. Well what is a primate? I asked the students ...more

MUSEUMS
It was a great day at TMSE. The kids were focused throughout the period and seemed to have fun doing their activity. Also, they appear to have an increasingly better knowledge of the study of anthropology and are continually excited to do new things each week.
Under Lunes/Hermes Clan
This week the lesson was centered on ...more

Coming into the classroom the students had their eyes fixed on the boxes for the activity. Even students who weren’t signed up for anthropology were curious about what was to come. The lesson began with asking the students what they thought archaeology was. Some said it was the study of past people. While that may ...more

It was really exciting for me to start the new year! This was the second week we were with the kids from Arcadia, but my first time since I missed last week. We learned about Ethnography. Ethnography, as our students now know, is when anthropologists go to other cultures and write accounts of what they ...more

Tuesday, we focused our discussion on the subject of Ethnography. The students were very energetic and engaged throughout the class period and learned that Ethnography is very important for the field of Anthropology. Students learned that it is through the process of Ethnography that Anthropologists learn more about different cultures.
Photo from Wikipedia
Our discussion ...more

This Thursday we had our first lesson in Anthropology at TMSE, where we will be studying the Anthropology of Brazil. I was excited to see how many enthusiastic students we have in our class this year.
Photo from https://richmondmom.com
Our first order of business was to form into clans. We randomly assigned the pupils to one ...more

Fig. 1. All-cause mortality, ages 45–54 for US White non-Hispanics (USW), US Hispanics (USH), and six comparison countries: France (FRA), Germany (GER), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada (CAN), Australia (AUS), and Sweden (SWE).
Every so often a piece of research comes along that is a real game-changer—it literally shakes the earth under your feet. I ...more

Dr. Weaver interviews a woman whose garden is the only consistent source of fresh vegetables for purchase in the Brazilian study community.
I just returned from two fieldwork trips: one to India for 6 weeks, and the other to Brazil for 4. The purpose of the first one was to scout new sites for my ...more

While I was in Peru I noticed a bite on my left forearm that wasn’t getting better. That would’ve been the last week of April. I wasn’t really too concerned about it; it wasn’t getting any better but it wasn’t getting any worse either. When I got back to Yorkín, 12 May, it quickly began ...more

David Meek, Author
In anthropology departments across the country, food systems courses are becoming increasingly prevalent. Their rapid growth makes sense, because there is significant overlap between the study of food systems and traditional areas of anthropological inquiry, such as food security, the anthropology of nutrition, and ethnobotany. Yet, despite anthropologists’ attention to cultural politics, ...more

For the past several years, the UA College of Arts & Sciences has been developing the Alabama-Greece Initiative. As outlined on the Initiative website, it is an effort to "develop an extensive and formal collaborative relationship with Aristotle University in Thessaloniki (AUTh)." In 2015, archaeologist and chair of our Anthropology Department was selected for the ...more

Author, Courtney Andrews, and her daughter
"Juana," a Mexican immigrant who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, is a native of a small ranching village in Jalisco. Fifteen years ago, her husband lost his job in Mexico. They had no money saved, and she was scared for the safety of her children because of drug-related crime in ...more

On May 7th I visited the Chachapoyas archaeological site of Revash and visited the small but amazing museum in Leymebamba, Peru. Revash's mausoleums are architectonical rests located in the Amazonas region of Peru. The mausoleums of Revash, located outside of the small community (100 persons?) of San Bartolo were studied by the archaeologists Henry and ...more

The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas Region of present-day Peru. The Inkas conquered their civilization shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Peru in the 16th century. Their incorporation into the Inka Empire was fraught with constant resistance to the ...more

This is my third post on my experience with the medicinal brew ayahuasca in San Roque, Peru. In my two previous posts (Ayahuasca Visions: The First Experience, and Ayahuasca: “La Medicina”) I provided background information on ayahuasca and described my first experience in an ayahuasca ceremony. In this post I will relate my second and ...more

On May 4th, 2016, I was able to visit the ruins of Kuelap, Peru. The fortress of Kuelap or Cuélap is associated with the Chachapoyas culture, and consists of a walled city, with massive exterior stone walls surrounding more than four hundred buildings. Radiocarbon dating samples show that construction of the structures started in the ...more

Long ago there was a Quechua man hunting in the forest. He can across a jaguar and was preparing to shoot it with his bow and arrow when he saw the beast beginning to chew on a vine wrapping itself around a tree. He thought this was strange and instead of shooting stood silently and ...more

By Hannah Tytus
This was our last day at TMSE! We’ve all had so much fun together this semester, and to conclude our program we definitely had to go out with a bang.
So we ditched the traditional powerpoint and had ourselves a traditional Southeast Asian feast! We took our shoes off upon entry and arranged ourselves ...more

Sonya Pritzker
Biocultural anthropology offers an inherently interdisciplinary, cross-subfield approach to anthropological research. As such, it draws heavily upon various biological, cognitive, and sociocultural theories, among others, to point researchers towards certain methodologies and variables for inclusion in their research design. The outcome of such an approach yields a growing genre of work that articulates ...more

Not really "fought," persay, but It rhymed so I typed it. Anyway, this post is about: Dental Calculus! Which I chose for two reasons: 1) It's interesting and 2) I didn't get to show you guys the picture of calculus in Methods the other day.
More importantly, this post is about John Hawks' blog, which is ...more

Diet for a Small Primate by Stephen F. Ferrari
Look at my buffy head!
The buffy headed marmoset of Brazil rely on plant gums for a large portion of their diet. These gums contain a variety of nutrients like carbs, protein, mineral slats and calcium. Using gum has two restrictions, however. The first is that gum ...more

Evolutionary Biology of Hormonal Responses to Social Challenges in the Human Child by Mark V. Flinn
"'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.'
-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
And why was quiet desperation such a widespread malady back then, and especially among men? Yet again I trot onstage the only real villain in my story: the oversize ...more

Get outta here!
First thing's first: What exactly is a Y-Haplogroup, and why on earth does it matter?
The Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup is a haplogroup (<---which is a group of similar haplotypes )that is defined by differences in the non-recombining parts of the DNA from the Y chromosome (also dubbed Y-DNA).
That's a fun definition, ...more

Article:
Wilson, E. O. (1976). The Social Instinct. Bulletin of the Academy of the Arts and Sciences, 30(1), 11-25. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3822607
Sociobiology is the study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in all organisms, and is part of an effort to bring biology as a science to psychology, anthropology, and sociology. It deals with ...more

Hey ladies and lads, I'm doing the second half of Part 1 of The Primate Anthology, also known as pages 44- 87. APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR LENGTH, I KNOW IT IS VERY LONG.
Chapter 6: Daughters or Sons
In many cultures, boys are more "beneficial" than girls. They are stronger, carry the family name, and they do ...more

The relationship between social networks and health has been well-established in anthropology, and more generally the social sciences, ever since Émile Durkheim uncovered the link between social isolation and suicide. Medical anthropologists, too, have long recognized that persons with more diverse social ties and greater emotional and economic support are typically healthier. Still, few have ...more

This is a repost from December 12, 2012, after the death of my best friend. I will be reposting from my EvoS Studies Consortium blog & am starting with this post because we are discussing alcohol use & abuse in the new "Biocultural Seminar: Anthropology of Drug Use." The readings have me mentally revisiting this ...more

Alumni News
In 2015, Dr. Meredith Jackson-de Graffenried (PhD, 2009) became Country Director of Helen Keller International (HKI) for Bangladesh.
Max Stein, left, a UA doctoral student working in Peru, sits with Oths in her campus office (Bryan Hester).
Dr. Charlan Kroelinger (MA, 1997), Team Leader for the Maternal and child Health Epidemiology Program at the CDC, was recognized with ...more

It is with much sadness that, in addition to sharing the accomplishments of our department over the past months, we also say goodbye to friends. In June 2015, we received news that Dr. John Cottier had passed away. In addition to being a wonderful person and a fine archaeologist, he was a good friend to ...more

Dr. Abrams meets Dr. Jim Bindon, who helped develop our Biocultural Medical program and in whose honor the lecture series was started.
In the fall, we hosted several in-house lectures and workshops and were graced by talks by a few visiting scholars.
On October 8, we were able to take advantage of a visit to Tuscaloosa ...more

Doctoral Students
Newly minted Dr. Jenna James with her committee, Drs. Ian Brown, Michael Murphy, Jim Knight, Kathryn Braund, and Keith Jacobi.
We are pleased with all of the successes of our students, but the defense of a doctoral dissertation is a special achievement. We want to recognize the hard work displayed by three of our ...more

Dr. Michael Murphy & his longtime collaborator, Dr. Juan Carlos Gonzalez Faraco
We are all chagrined by the retirement of Dr. Michael Murphy. Dr. Murphy, who is now Professor Emeritus as of the end of the fall 2015 semester, leaves an indelible stamp on our department. As professor and chair, Michael Murphy provided a firm ...more

Elliot Blair has continued his research constructing social network visualizations of aggregated mission communities in 17th century La Florida. He has also continued working on two collaborative projects using compositional analyses to examine the sourcing and circulation of glass beads in the 16th to 18th century Southeast.
John Blitz published a study of the relationship between ...more

Invited Lectures
Several of our faculty were invited to give lectures around the country this past fall. Dr. Lesley Jo Weaver flew to Arizona State University on October 23 to give a talk for their School of Human Evolution and Social change entitled "Chronic Diseases in India: A Biocultural Approach” and another for Smith College's South Asian ...more

This week in the graduate level physical anthropology class, we addressed race. Among the several articles we read, a few were discussed more than others. Unsurprisingly, the articles that received the most attention were the ones the class had strong objections to. For example, much time was spent pointing out problems with an article by a forensic ...more

Biography: Dr. Alison Brough is Post-Doctorate Research Associate in the East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. Her areas of research interest include forensic anthropology, post-mortem computed tomography, imaging, forensic radiology and the applications of forensic technologies to disaster victim identification. Dr. Brough is a Fellow of the ...more

Dr. Rachel Caspari currently serves as the Chairperson for the department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Central Michigan University. She also currently serves as the president for the Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association. As a paleoanthropologist, Dr. Caspari’s research has developed into three major parts, including functional morphology, race and ...more

Russel H. Tuttle (1939) is currently a member of the University of Chicago Department of anthropology as a physical anthropologist specializing in paleoanthropology, primatology, morphology and evolution. He has received global recognition for his many contributions to the field of anthropology and as an educator.
Growing up in rural Ohio, Dr. Tuttle truly admired his teachers, ...more

Biography: Hannah Marie Wormington-Volk (1914-1994)
“Four questions come to the fore: How was it that Wormington, a very young woman with only a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, made such significant contributions to archaeology and museology so early in her long career? Does her manifold success give the lie to the proposition that American archeology was an ...more

Professional Biography
Dr. Jeffrey H. Schwartz is a professor in the Departments of Anthropology, History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Schwartz is a physical anthropologist whose body of work is concentrated on teaching and research in three major foci: the exploration of method, theory and philosophy of evolutionary ...more

The conceptualization of race arose due to the confluence of a number of factors related to greater maritime activity and colonial expansion by European powers throughout the last 500 years.
Economics
Western societies have demonstrated a knack for socio-political dominance. Examples abound from throughout history and around the world, such as the exploitation of Mesoamerican peoples by Spanish ...more

Dr. Bruce Latimer is a paleoanthropologist at Case Western Reserve University. He received his Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Arizona at Tuscon, his MA in Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Kent State University in 1988. Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy was his advisor. Dr. Latimer ...more

Following race, the next topic for 670 was human plasticity. One of the readings was by Roberto Frisancho, in which he provides a foundation for studying human plasticity and adaptation. In the article, Frisancho explains homeostasis and environmental stress. Homeostasis is an internal stability or balance of physiological functions, and an organism tries to constantly ...more

It has been well documented that the concept of “race” is not a biologically real classification. In fact studies have shown that 94% of phenotypic variation is found within, rather than between “racial groups.” But does this mean that there is no longer any validity to classifying individuals by ancestry, particularly for bioarchaeologists who rely ...more

Two weeks ago, we were honored to have Dr. Jim Bindon join us for our class discussions on race. Dr. Bindon is a physical anthropologist and UA emeritus professor who is our resident expert on human variation. He gave a fascinating lecture on race on Tuesday. I led a less fascinating reading discussion on Thursday ...more

Peopling of the Americas: Hypothesized Routes
In our discussion of the peopling of the Americas, we read and discussed the hypothesized routes for the first settlement of the Americas, including coastal, overland, and Atlantic routes. For decades, or as Dixon (2001) suggests “almost 500 years,” the official narrative has very much supported the overland route through ...more

For class this week one of the required readings was “Does Race Exist” by George W. Gill, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. As a physical and forensic anthropologist, he attempts to deconstruct the “reality of race” debate, and identifies himself as a proponent of the reality of biological race. However, I’ve found ...more

The so called reburial issue is a significant struggle faced by archaeologists around the world and has been handled in many different ways with varying degrees of success. In the United States we most often hear of struggles facing modern archaeology due to NAGPRA regulations.
Passed in the 1990s the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation ...more

In our class discussion, the topic of the relationship between humans and megafauna came up. While it began with discussion of megafaunal extinction in North America, Dr. Lynn brought up that a similar situation occurs in Australia, where there is mass extinction around the arrival of humans in the area. The two main factors in consideration are ...more

What Is Biological Anthropology?
Biological or Physical Anthropology is human biological diversity in time and space (Kottak, 1994). Biological Anthropology is the study of human potential from both the physiological and psychological perspective (Royal Anthropological Institute, 2010) Forensic Anthropology, Evolutionary Anthropology and Primates are all a part of the central organizing concepts of Biological Anthropology (Royal ...more

They say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I don't know who they are or were, but they've got a point. It's very easy to try and fix things only to have them turn out worse than before due to unexpected consequences. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) fits ...more

Welcome to Part II of the non-human primate mothering series on infant handling, in which I pose questions about why primates handle, and sometimes steal, others’ babies. In this post, I address how social status and competition factor into infant handling.
In the first post of this series entitled “Why Steal a Baby,” I reviewed the ...more

As I said in my last post, human migration is a topic of some debate. I've addressed the why. Now, I'd like to address the how and the when.
During most of my undergraduate education, the model most often cited entailed northeast asian populations crossing Beringia and inhabiting subarctic regions until an interglacial period produced a ...more

To date, much controversy surrounds the expansion of H. sapiens out of Africa. When did humans spread to the different parts of the globe? How did they get there? Why did they come? In this post, the "why" will be addressed in simple terms.
This snippet from Coming to America (1988) seems applicable.
Lisa: So why did ...more

(Pictured above: A skull of Australopithecus africanus)
Walter W. Ferguson (1984) argues that the discovery of several hominoid fossils in Hadar, Ethopia is a part of a new species, Homo antiquus.
Hadar or the Hadar Research Project Area is the widely accepted name for the archaeological site approximately 300 Km (180 Miles) northeast of Addis Ababa in ...more

The remains known as Homo cepranensis were found in near Ceprano in Southern Italy. According to Manzi et al., (2001) the fossil evidence is made up of an adult calveria, which was initially dated between 800 and 900 ka. In this article several explanations are explored for the classification of this sample, including possibly a ...more

Homo gautengensis is a hominin species whose remains were discovered in the South African paleocaves of Sterkfontain, Drimolen, Kromdraai, and Gondolin. First described by Curnoe in 2010, it was suggested to have lived 2.00-0.82 million years ago (based on multi-method chronological seriation) in South, and possibly East, Africa. Bivariate analysis comparing cranial and mandibular measurements ...more

In class, Larry and I were assigned to read and present on the finding of Homo gautengensis (I can almost spell it without looking by now). The article (Curnoe 2010) was full of details on the specimen. However, this took the form of cranial and dental analysis, as post-cranial remains have yet to be found. ...more

On Tuesday, Dr. Lynn provided the class with seven papers on seven Homo species that we had never heard of. Dr. Lynn handed me a paper written by C.U. Ariëns Kappers entitled “The Endocranial Casts of the Ehringsdorf and Homo Soloensis Skulls.” After briefing our papers, we provided a synopsis based on what we read from our these articles. ...more

Welcome to my blog! As part of the ANT 670: Principles of Physical Anthropology course, I will be keeping this web page as a sort of window into my learning in real-time. While I will be posting mainly about topics in physical anthropology, I will also include other interesting goings-on from my linguistics and methods classes, ...more

Dr. William Leonard was born in Jamestown, New York and grew up in Pennsylvania. As a child, his parents were very supportive of his scientific interests. As an undergraduate at The Pennsylvania State University, Leonard pursued his strong interest in ecology and evolutionary biology, and particularly how they relate to humans. While his Bachelor of ...more

In "A Hominid from the Lower Pleistocene of Atapuerca, Spain: Possible Ancestor to Neandertals and Modern Humans," J. M. B. d. Castro et al. (1997) propose that fossilized remains dating to the lower Pleistocene found at Gran Dolina in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain represent a new species within the genus Homo, which they have named ...more

Léonce Pierre Manouvrier
Biography
Léonce Pierre Manouvrier was born in Guéret, Creuse, France on January 18, 1850 In the tradition of his family, Manouvrier would study medicine and receive his M.D., with the distinction of lauréat du prix de thèse, from the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1881 He would go on to work with noted anthropologist ...more

"(Grunting in a Feminine Voice)!"-Neanderthal Comedian
"That's the dirtiest wooly rhinoceros joke that I've ever heard!" At least, that's what I might have said if I had lived in Europe some 50 kya... or if neanderthals had ever developed the ability to speak.
Speech is often considered one of the defining characteristics of humanity. Our ability to ...more

While we have not covered the race concept in class, aside from the brief remarks by Relethford (2010) in the History of Physical Anthropology book, I see an opportunity to link material from both Physical Anthropology and Linguistic Anthropology through the race concept. In the linguistics class, we were discussing languages versus dialects, and what ...more

Dr. Kewal Krishan is Senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. His areas of interest include forensic anthropology, forensic osteology, anthropometry, stature estimation, growth and nutritional status. He extensively worked on Gujjars of North-West India. The majority of Dr. Krishan’s publications are in the fields of anthropometry, anthropometrics ...more

We now live at a point in time marked by the rapid extinction of countless species each and every day. Primates, being relatively large and specialized, are at particular risk of extinction due to habitat destruction. This risk is further compounded by their popularity in the exotic pet trade. However, their is a distinct lack of ...more

Donald J. Ortner, Ph.D., D.Sc. (1938-2012)
Donald J. Ortner was born August 23, 1938 in Massachusetts. Because his father was a minister with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, much of his childhood was spent moving from place to place. In 1960 he received a BA in zoology from Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland. 1960 was ...more

Recently I have been completely convinced of the need to continue the battle for basic evolutionary education in all levels of school.
I feel that I need to preface this by saying that I never had to be convinced of the legitimacy of evolution, it was always a part of my life. Being raised by scientific ...more

This week in class, we have asked compelling questions about the utility of research that fails to lead the scientific community in new directions. What is the appropriate balance between scientific study and conservation? How do we go about finding that balance? Should there even be a balance, or should we just focus our efforts ...more

My name is Anna Bianchi, and I am a graduate student of biocultural anthropology at The University of Alabama. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Birmingham-Southern College and Master's in Public Health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I am interested in the anthropology of reproductive ...more

A brief biography
Jonathan M. Marks, PhD, is a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). Previously, he has taught at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley. His interests include human evolution, the anthropology of science, general biological anthropology, general anthropology, and the critical, historical, and social studies of human ...more

Dr. Cynthia Beall began her education with a B.A. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970. As an undergraduate she was interested in evolution and ecology. In a 2004 interview with the National Academy of Sciences, she indicated that she became interested in human adaptation during her senior year while taking Physiological Adaptability ...more

As an aspirant anthropologist of a biocultural bent, I often analyze behaviors from an evolutionary framework; so when we started ANT 670 with an introduction to the concepts of cultural primatology and ethnoprimatology, it was right up my alley. One of my interests is the relationship between biological realities and social capital. Smuts (1987) wrote ...more

On the second day of class, Dr. Lynn told us the importance of knowing everyone in the department and having them know us. Therefore, he assigned us to go out and introduce ourselves to all of the faculty members we had not met. I instantly knew the first person I would reach out to; Dr. ...more

Two main thoughts really interested me during this past week of class. The first centers on our class discussion about evolution and intelligent design. I was not so much interested by the topic, but more so with the general lack of interest I saw in the class (me included) with this very old debate. I wasn't ...more

Having cracked the spine of The Primate Anthology by Ciochon and Nisbett, it is safe to say that primates display a wide array of behaviors. Primates show great ingenuity in their ability to creatively solve problems and oftentimes the reasoning for the behavior seems clear. However, this is not the case with infant theft. Infant theft ...more

Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, CAN
Twenty years ago I was finishing up a 2-year deal as a Student Assistant Editor of The Journal of Planning Literature in the Department of City and Regional Planning at The Ohio State University. It wasn't a paid Graduate Assistantship and how I wound up on the editorial staff is ...more

I see Anthropology as the study of human potential. By the term “human potential,” I mean the vicarious expressions of life as experienced by real human beings in their physical, linguistic, cultural and historical environments. These vicarious expressions are based in cognition, which provides the backdrop for the entire field of Anthropology.
Anthropology is classically defined ...more

Greetings and welcome to my blog. Like professional hockey, there will be only a short preseason. Look for some more postings in the near future. Tonight the New York Islanders move into Manhattan for the first-time ever with their first preseason game of the 2015-2016 season.
Just like this blog: Here we ...more

When I was in the process of developing my course on race I decided to assign chapter VII of Darwin’s 1871 Descent of Man, the chapter entitled “On the Races of Man”, where among many 19th century racial anachronisms Darwin makes a case for the unity of the human species. Graves (2001) summarizes the critical ...more

This January the UAAC had the pleasure of camping for two nights at Leroy Percy State Park (in cabins!) and assisting one of our fellow students with her dissertation research at Arcola Mounds in the Mississippi Delta. Students and volunteers participated in a controlled surface collection of the site and toured the nearby Winterville Mounds. ...more

It was a cold day in late February - but our awesome Anthropology Club members still made it out to the river to help wash artifacts from the surface collection field trip to Arcola Mounds.
A nice day on the river!
Dr. Brown!
Our mascot ...more

The David and Elizabeth DeJarnette Endowed Scholarship is awarded annually by the Department of Anthropology. As per the eclectic interests of David L. DeJarnette, priority of consideration is given to graduate students who are conducting archaeological research at Moundville Archaeological Park, the southeastern United States more generally, or in Latin America. Recipients of this prestigious award ...more

The Moundville Archaeological Park, located in Moundville, Alabama, has an annual Native American Festival designed to celebrate the region's rich Native American heritage. This year's celebration was particularly significant because 2014 marks both the 75th anniversary of the Moundville Park and the 25th anniversary of the Moundville Festival! The UA Department of Anthropology has a ...more

I grew up in San Francisco from the late 1940s to the late 60s (if you think I'm no longer growing up) where there were still segregated residential patterns but an air of tolerance for difference from Hunter's Point to Chinatown to the female impersonator bars in North Beach. My junior high and high school ...more

Małgosia and Anka at the Jewish cemetery. The building in the background holds trash bins for surrounding apartments. The resident we spoke with felt uncomfortable about keeping the trash in a cemetery.
Author Marysia Galbraith has kindly let the Bama Anthro Blog Network repost from the original site here.
In early December, I visited the Poznan Jewish ...more

Monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp
Despite the cold, Anka, Małgosia and I visited a few other sites associated with Jewish culture and history. The monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp is on Królowa Jadwiga Street even though the actual detainment site was a block away in the old football stadium. ...more

Author Marysia Galbraith has kindly let the Bama Anthro Blog Network repost from the original site here.
A defining question of my study is turning out to be: How do you remember Jewish lives in Poland when nothing remains? Or when there are only scattered traces?
I certainly started with next to nothing when I began the ...more

Manfred Diehl, Helena Chui, Elizabeth L. Hay are part of the Adult Development and Aging Project (ADAPT) at Colorado State University. Their mission is "To contribute to the knowledge about healthy and successful adult development and aging through research, education, and collaborative outreach." Dr. Diehl received his PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania ...more

After reading Greg Downey's The Encultured Brain chapter on neural enculturation in capoeira and Lisa Heywood's 2011 article advocating a cultural neuropychology of sport, I thought a lot about how these articles applied to physical activity in general. What makes people commit to physical activity? This isn't a question I'm unfamiliar with. As a chronic yo-yo dieter and infrequent exerciser ...more

I used this article because it showed that current research proves that children with a developmental disability on the autistic spectrum are helped by their participation in church settings. It proved helpful by showing what benefits religious involvement could help children with autism.
Article: "Inclusion of people with mental retardation and other developmental disabilities in communities ...more

I used this article, as well as the chapter in our book on autism, to help me get a full picture of what autism is and how it affects people and the way they behave. It helped to show me that there was a spectrum of autistic disorders that show how well those with autism ...more

This article focused on how families dealt with their children having autism in a religious setting. I used this article to discover how whether or not families found their religion as a positive or negative way of helping them with their autistic children.
Article: "Religious Coping in Families of Children with Autism" by Nalini Tarakeschwar and ...more

I used this article mainly because it was written by a person who has autism and is about their experience communing with God. It provided me with an inside view of what it was like to have autism and experience religion. The article's main focus was to make sure it was known that autistic people ...more

This article focuses on different treatment options for children with autism, specifically a Christ-centered treatment program. This article mainly interested me because it looked at an alternate way to help treat autism.
Article: "Integrating Faith and Treatment for Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders" by Cara Marker, Magdalena Weeks, and Irene Kraegel, published in 2007 ...more

This article focused on how a family's faith and religion helped to support them and their autistic children. I used this article to help me understand the possible benefits that children could have by being involved within their church. This is the article that sparked my idea of a difference in the structural environments of ...more

This article specifically focused on how those who have been diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum interact with God and view the image of God. I mainly used this article to help me understand how a child with autism might have a relationship with God, despite having obvious social impairments.
Article: "Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Image ...more

This study looked at three families immigrant South Asian Muslim families with children that had been diagnosed as on the Autism Spectrum. I mainly utilized their usage of participant observation and how the researcher immersed themselves within the cultures of the families in order to fully understand what their life was like.
Article: "Autism From a ...more

I have dived into online dating websites before a few years ago and actually met someone. That didn't last long at all. It could have been due to the set up of the dating site Ok cupid or simply due to lack of interest I had in my date after meeting her. Needless to say ...more

I was very apprehensive in trying this since I used to identify myself as a lesbian and anyone I told would most likely respond with a smart comment like "really, you don't say". However in the last several months I have had several conversations with friends on sexuality as being fluid. It is a topic ...more

The new orangutan facility at the Indianapolis Zoo is really impressive. We checked it out this past summer while visiting my family in Indy. The facility is a network of buildings, outdoor space, & climbing structures that the individuals can navigate with a fair amount of freedom &, if they want it, privacy. Unfortunately, because my ...more

William R. Leonard is a leading anthropologist in the field of human nutrition. He was born in Jamestown, NY and received his PhD in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1987. He is now an Abraham Harris Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Chair of Anthropology at Northwestern ...more

In this week’s reading, climate change and adaption among humans was the issue at hand. We learned that human-occupied environments of today are extremely different from those of tropical forests beginnings as well, historical Neanderthals. Within environments, one’s body will either adapt to hot or cold conditions. The way in which the body adapts to ...more

This weeks' reading revolved around stress on the human body. These blueprints to hormone level production, neuron response, and the neurological development was displayed in a case study by Aaron Kindsvatter and Anne Geroski. In this article entitled, “The Impact of Early Life Stress on the Neurodevelopment of the Stress Response System, they present a ...more

The chapter this week was all about stress and reminded me of one of our very own professors here at University of Alabama, Dr. Dressler. His work on cultural consonance and its connection in African Americans in Alabama and higher blood pressure levels is actually mentioned in the chapter we read. The chapter discussed how ...more

John Snow "Father of Modern Epidemiology"
John Snow, born in 1813, was the son of a coal-yard laborer in York, England. Snow planned to become a physician, and at fourteen, he was apprenticed to Dr. William Hardcastle. During his early years as an apprentice, he filled notebooks with his thoughts and observations on scientific subjects. ...more

Aging and senescence are two concepts of biological evolution that usually occur simultaneously. Aging is an inevitable process among all humans and animal species. The survival method and length may be different, but the body’s equipment will begin to deteriorate with time. Time is a process that cannot be reversed biologically or socially; therefore the ...more

The body is a complex mechanism among both female and males. The growth of the human body depends on many factors including, the embryo stage, puberty, and physical activity among the growth years. In order for a body to progress/growth successfully, it must reach maturation biologically. This development promotes growth maturation for the remainder of ...more

Friedrich Leopold August Weismann
Educational Background/Training
Weismann was born on 17 January 1834 in Frankfurt am Main, in the German Confederation. His mother, Elise Eleanor Lübbren, was a musician and painter, and his father, Johann Konrad August Weismann, was a classics professor. Weismann studied music, particularly the works of Beethoven, and he studied nature, from which he ...more

Thinking of office cubicles in the brain may help us imagine how dissociation might work & even be a great metaphor when we start suggesting that sometimes there is a jerky boss in our heads who comes out & barks at employees then cloisters himself away & a whole host of employees sitting in their ...more

I recently had the opportunity to attend the American Anthropological Association’s (AAA) 111th Annual Conference in San Francisco, and one of the session topics focused on neuroanthropology: ‘Brains in the Wild: The Challenges of Neuroanthropology.’
I would like to share the content of this session - including papers by Daniel Lende, Jeffrey Snodgrass, Sarah Mahler, and Greg ...more

Human epidemiology is the study of disease, its contributions and disparities, and potential ways to help stop the spread of disease. Among the West, there are many different diseases, viruses, prions, and other contagions that are incurable. Even among all the technology, in-depth research, and major complex studying among control variables, the West is still ...more

Wednesday night we hosted a mid-semester social to get everyone together and relax a bit after midterms. Club members took a break and enjoyed pizza, snacks, and The Lego Movie. Thank you Brass (and Angelica!) for organizing such a nice event!
"Instruction to fit in, have everyone like you, and always be happy. Step 1: Breathe!"
...more

This fall the UAAC had the pleasure of camping for two nights in Joe Wheeler State Park. We toured nearby attractions including Florence Mound and the Athens Fiddlers Convention. A great trip and a glorious break from a busy semester! Thank you Ashley (and Angelica!) for organizing this for us!
...more

The human body is very complex, yet simple mechanism. The way in which cholesterol (fats), minerals, and vitamins contribute to the nutrients within the body range. The human body is made of millions of cells that are directed by DNA to make certain proteins, which then code for the insertion of amino acids (polypeptide chains). ...more

Dissociation and Human Consciousness
There is little agreement on what consciousness is or how to define it, but most reduce in some way to being aware of inner & external states. This reduces to two essential capacities that are related, self-awareness & theory of mind. Self-awareness is the ability to distinguish the self from others & ...more

Ed Norton's character in "Fight Club" has dissociative identity disorder (DID), & Brad Pitt is actually one of his alters. This movie is an example of what I refer to as DID being the contemporary deus ex machina, wherein it swoops in & resolves otherwise inextricable plots. In all fairness though, it's based on ...more

Rebecca Seligman is a medical and psychological anthropologist at Northwestern University. Seligman received her PhD from Emory in 2004. Her current research looks into both the mental and physical health of Mexican Americans, specifically between diabetes and depression. Her work on dissociative experience and cultural neuroscience, with Laurence Kirmayer, was published in 2008. Kirmayer is ...more

Mark Schaller is a psychological scientist and Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1984 and obtained a PhD in Psychology at Arizona State University in 1989. He's been at his current position at the University of British Columbia since 1996. Schaller's research looks into the cognitive processes that contribute ...more

In his essay, "Shamanism as Neurotheology and Evolutionary Psychology," author Michael Winkelman looks at various instances of shamanism across cultures to find similarities that reveal "universals" about the practice.
Dr. Michael WinkelmanAssociate Professor Arizona State University
Winkelman recently retired from his post as an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ...more

Matt J RosanoSoutheastern Louisiana University
Matt J. Rossano received his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California at Riverside in 1991. He is a Professor of Psychology at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA. He is the author of Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, released in June 2010 by Oxford Press. His interests include: Evolution and ...more

For this exercise, males in the class were instructed to wear a new T-Shirt provided by the instructor for up to 3 days. Males were instructed to not wear colognes or deodorants while wearing the T-Shirt, and to exercise while wearing it in order to get his natural scent into the fibers. Then, the males ...more

Yesterday I told my best friend that I was queer. She looked at me and said "is this supposed to surprise me? you talk about how gorgeous girls are and how you would 'totally be lesbian with them' reguarly." I giggled, but just let her keep talking. She continued by asking me questions about my ...more

Students in the Sprin 2014 ANT:208 Anthropology of Sex class at The University of Alabama were tasked with a rather unusual and provocative social experiment as extra credit in the class: tell a close friend or family member that you are queer! What many people are not aware of, is that the LGBT community has ...more

Andrew Cooper
Professor Christopher Lynn
Ant 208
8 April 2014
Dating App Extra Credit
Tinder:
Used my real name and information
Got a lot of matches at first but only a sliver of these matches actually contacted me
A few of the people that did contact me were way too straight forward and clearly just wanted to hookup to the point where it ...more

Janice Boddy is a Canadian anthropologist who specializes in medical anthropology, religion, gender issues and colonialism in Sudan and the Middle East. In Spirit Possession and Gender Complementarity, an excerpt from her book Women, Men and the zār Cult in Northern Sudan, she describes her experience at a zār ritual ceremony among the Hofriyat people ...more

Have you ever been so absorbed in a video game that you lose track of time? One moment its noon and the next thing you know the moonlight is shining through the windows. This is not uncommon to many, our lives are filled with all sorts of video games, from the Sims to World of ...more

Students were tasked with employing two ethology techniques discussed in class (focal sampling and scan sampling) on people trying to hook up. The choice of research setting was up to the discretion of the investigator, some examples include bars, restaurants, coffee shops, the Quad, The Ferguson Center, the Rec, etc.
For those who may not be ...more

Here we are at the Birmingham Zoo with Christopher the gibbon
Christopher
Student presentations are required as part of the "Non-Human Primates" course, but we all get a little tired of the lecturing, so what better way to internalize the material than engaging some of our primate preadaptations & monkeying around.
Here are some photos highlighting ...more

The Black and White Colobus Monkey is an Old World Monkey species that belongs to the Cercopithecidae family. The species is known for its 'beautiful' black fur that is contrasted exquisitely by a white mantle that hangs extensively off its back side, as well as bushy tail, whiskers, and beard. Not excessively large, the Colobus typically weighs in ...more

Order: Primate
Suborder: Anthropoidea
Family: Cercopithecidae
Subfamily: Colombinae
Genus: Trachypithecus (formerly Presbytis)
Species: Francoisi
Trachypithecus francoisi, better known as the Francois Langur can be found in Southeatern Asia: from Southeastern China to Central Laos and Vietnam. They tend to be both arboreal and terrestrial. Most of their habitats lay deep in the rainforests or mangroves, but some can be found among ...more

Order: Primates
Family: Hylobatidae
Genus: Symphalangus
Species: S. syndactylus
Symphalangus syndactylus, also known as the siamang, is the largest of the many species of gibbons. Both male and female siamangs have black hair and grey or pink throat sacs. They can range in height from approximately 2.5 to 3 feet, and they can weigh from 17 to 28 pounds; although there have been larger siamangs ...more

Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Ponginae
Genus: Pongo
Species: P. pygmaeus
The Bornean orangutan is one of three subspecies of orangutan and can only be found in Southeast Asia on the island of Borneo. Growing up to 5’ tall, these apes can weigh from 70-190 pounds, with arms almost long enough to drag the ground when standing upright. Living in ...more

Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Genus: Pan
Species: Pan troglodytes
The first European contact with chimpanzees happened in Angola during the 17th century by a Portuguese explorer named Duarte Pacheco, the dairy that he kept was also the first documentation that they could make tools. The use of the word chimpanzee did not happen until 1738 and is derived ...more

Sounds like a lame excuse to post photos of my kids, doesn't it? Yeah, well, only partially. In fact, here's one to get us started.
Lux enjoying the paintings
But what I really wanted to post was a few that involve depictions of non-human primates.
The following depicts St. Dominic with the Devil in the form of ...more

The cotton top tamarin has a shock of white hair that extends from the top of the head.
Saguinus oedipus, or more commonly known as the cotton top tamarin is a New World primate that belongs to the Callitrichidae family. The cotton top tamarin can be found climbing and jumping through the tree tops of tropical ...more

Cebus apella of the Cebidae family is better known as the tufted capuchin. The tufted capuchin is a New World primate located in South America. Tufted capuchins spend most of their time within the mid-canopy of rain-forests; however they do sometimes move to the ground to play and forage.
The unique tufts of hair above ...more

I attend the “All Bodies Have Voices” panel discussion and was presently surprised by the experience I had there. The panelists each brought their own topic of discussion, views, and opinions which help to add depth to the conversation. Wanda Burton the peer education programs coordinator for the women’s resource center talked a great deal ...more

For this activity I decided I wanted to tell my best friend that I was queer. I hadn’t seen her all semester and we were getting together to catch up, so I figured she was the best person I could tell since we hadn’t really talked about what this class and a person can change ...more

I did this activity with both of my parents, each separately because I know they would each have a very different reaction. I decided to do this on my dad first because he is usually very close-minded when it comes to these things. I called my dad after he got off work and told him ...more

When E.O. Wilson came to speak at UA a number of weeks back, the Human Behavioral Ecology Research Group (HBERG) lab was fortunate enough to host him at a smaller venue for EvoS students. This was more personal and friendly than his talk the evening before to a packed auditorium at the Bryant Conference Center. There was plenty ...more